Although only 10% of Moroccan women report working for wages, a large majority of those who do so say they feel either completely free (70%) or somewhat free (13%) to decide how their earnings are used (Figure 11). Control over assets appears to increase with education, but the large number of DK/NR responses makes it difficult to say with complete confidence.

Women are more likely than men to report keeping all of their earnings for themselves (27% vs 14%), but this may be due to the fact that a greater proportion of the female sample is married (64%) than the male sample (55%).

Only 2% of women aged 18 to 24 report giving all of their earnings to their spouse or parents to manage, and none of the women in any other age group did so.

In general, women are more likely to spend their earnings on their family and less likely to keep it entirely for themselves as they get older, possibly because many younger women might not have their own households and children on which to spend their earnings.

However, the opposite pattern is seen with educational attainment: 62% of women with no formal education spend all their earnings on their families, compared to just 15% of women with a secondary education. Forty-one percent of these women report keeping all of their earnings for themselves, compared to just 11% of those with no education.

Again, the DK/NR responses may be partly responsible: 21% of women with no education said they didn’t know or refused to answer, while only 5% of women with a secondary degree fall into this category.